Costs and Benefits of Collective Pension Systems

In January 2006, the Dutch Association of Industry-wide Pension Funds (VB) told us about their plan to prepare a book on solidarity in collective pension systems.

The Dutch pension system is often praised as one of the best in the world: it is efficient, it provides certainty to participants and it preserves cohesion and solidarity among workers and pensioners. This book presents these benefits in detail, supported by quantitative evidence. It also discusses the aspects of the system that are less favourable, however, such as implicit value transfers from younger to older generations that limit mobility of labour. The analyses of both benefits and costs will help pension fund managers, boards of trustees, supervisors, and researchers to understand and to improve pension systems currently in place around the world.

Steenbeek and Van der Lecq have assembled a rich combination of academic and practitioner chapters on the functions and dysfunctions of a collective pension system. These analyses carefully identify both the risk-sharing and value-transfer elements of the system and offer a powerful methodology for evaluating each and providing a systematic and objective means to evaluate such systems. Whether novice student or seasoned professional of collective pension issues, this work is a "must have" on the subject.
Robert C. Merton
John and Natty McArthur University Professor, Harvard Business School
Chief Science Officer, Trinsum Group

"The Dutch are the globe’s thought-leaders in the design and implementation of retirement income systems. This book offers the rest of the world a first-hand opportunity to learn why this is the case."
Keith Ambachtsheer, University of Toronto
Director, Rotman International Centre for Pension Management

"The Dutch experience, which this book so helpfully lays out, gives the rest of the world a model that is quite distinct from either the disappearing single-employer defined benefit approach and the rising individualistic defined contribution approach. That experience and this book challenge anyone interested in policies forlifetime financial security to consider systemic progress rather than ad hoc patches."
Brett Hammond
Senior Managing Director & Chief Investment Strategist TIAA-CREF Asset Management

"The Dutch think long and hard before adopting changes to their well-designed pension system. By contrast, the emergence of the individualistic 401(k) as the primary retirement income vehicle in the United States was clearly haphazard. Policymakers interested in improving our ‘accidental’ pension system have much to learn from this volume, which shows the benefits of a more considered and collective approach."
Alicia Munnell, Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences, Boston College Director, Center for Retirement Research, Carroll School of Management

"The reorganisation of pension systems is one of the great challenges we are facing today. This impressive collection of studies offers the specialist reader a comprehensive overview of the current debate."
Bert Rürup, Darmstadt University of Technology
Chairman, German Council of Economic Experts

In January 2006, the Dutch Association of Industry-wide Pension Funds (VB) told us about their plan to prepare a book on solidarity in collective pension systems. We were intrigued by this topic, both because of our - terest in the pension sector and because of the connection with solidarity in a cost-benefit approach. After some discussions with VB director Peter Borgdorff, we decided to start a project with leading scholars and prac- tioners, which was to result in a book. We hoped that the researchers could investigate the extent of value transfers within collective pension funds, so that quantitative indications of this institutionalized solidarity would - come publicly available. While the book was in progress, the discussion on solidarity and mandatory pension systems became very topical, and so 1 were the results of the analyses. When the book was released in Dutch , the chapter on costs differentials between pension funds and insurance companies also drew much attention. In the early months of 2007, the political and professional debates c- tinued, with increasing attention from pension experts from abroad. This made us decide to try and arrange a translated version of the book. We were happy to find Springer Verlag, and collaborate with their enthusi- tic publisher Dr. Niels Peter Thomas. We are also grateful to the Pension Science Trust (Stichting Pensioenwetenschap) for subsidizing the trans- tion by Language Lab, and to the earlier mentioned VB for their generous collaboration in getting the international edition released.